[A
flight of fancy is just that – a scribbling born of imagined
beauty, brought forth by the delights of music - a language universal
in appeal and reach.

No,
I won’t try to be excessively mystical. I won’t lay out thoughts
to confuse or impress you with seeming depth. I don’t do that.

Yes,
I write what comes to me. But for it to be pleasant to me, it must
offer something to others. I hope they’ll say, “I’m glad I
experienced that!...”]

♠♠♠

This
is going to be a series of short ‘mindwaves’ - flights of fancy,
I call them - inspired principally by the music and life of J. S.
Bach. They are not designed to be deep or complex. Not at all. I
hope you’ll see a connection between them and music, and hope
you’ll find they offer you the same comfort, satisfaction and calm
I get from composing them.

♠

The
most sublimely beautiful harmonies have pleased us at one point or
another…

We
may not know who composed them. We may not have tried to learn the
maestro’s identity. But we may have paused as we listened -
silently marveling, humming to ourselves, or whistling softly –
with our emotions sweeping upwards in a wondrous lifting of our mood…

Sometimes,
we’ve made a connection with the music itself, unwilling to let go
of this ‘thing’ which has so captured us inwardly. Likely
though, we didn’t know precisely what
lifted us. Or, we laid the credit for our briefly-soaring feelings
at the feet of some other stimulus. Certainly, we felt ‘something’
which moved our inward self to a temporary crest of beauty. It
leaves us a wistful longing for that sensation, that ‘thing’ we
had once, and at times long to bathe our spirits in again.

♠

I
am a huge fan of Bach. As in the composer Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685-1750)…

What
shaped this man and his genius?

Well,
he did not take half-steps in his life. In two marriages he fathered
some twenty children (alas, many of whom died in youth or infancy –
the eighteenth century was in some ways a harsh time…). He wrote
an enormous outpouring of religiously-inspired music. He was a
devout Lutheran, and signed his works with the initials ‘INJ’ –
In Nomine Jesu. With a crusty impatience, he taught students the art
of music.

His
faith-inspired music is almost without limit, deep and profound. Yet
he has written some of the most joyous musical gemstones, some just
for his own practice, or for warming up his fingers at the pipe organ
on a frosty winter’s morning…

He
produced secular compositions now recognized as masters of their
genre. He was – and is - recognized as one of the finest composers
of the art of the fugue the world has known.

Not
familiar with what a fugue is?...

It’s
a wonderful way of starting a melody, then starting that same melody
again several bars later, alongside the initial theme. When well
done, this provides a marvelously harmonious counterpoint. You’d
be surprised at how beautiful some of these apparently simple
constructions can be. And Bach’s could be quite complex…

But
enough about music composition and Bach’s bio. We’re too much
into the weeds. Now, where was I?

Oh,
yes. Bach. A lot of people I know appreciate his compositions. A
lot more see them as somewhat plodding, following an obvious
march-like progression which is not nearly as replete with flights of
harmonic fantasies as, say, later composers like Mozart (“The Magic
Flute”), or Johan Nepomuk Hummel (“The Magic Castle”). Nor are
they as playfully rhythmic in their tonal lyricism as Strauss’s
Viennese waltzes. Nor as movingly powerful as the incoming tides of
Beethoven’s majestic unleashed symphonies. I could go on…

But
Bach has his own genius…

He
plays to the steady, the home and hearth of our contentment, the
happiness and sublime joy it brings us to be alive, and in a place we
can search out and find beauty within. He knew what he wrote, and -
equally important - why he wrote it.

His
everyday spiritual rectitude was not something he thrust out
self-righteously to the world around him. Instead, he was sensitive
to others’ own partialities. He wrote, and let his music express
all his own joy at the rightness of the world. It was something he
was capable of perceiving, a gift not possessed or developed or
sought by very many others.

His
sense of this rightness is a source of his exuberant competence in
both secular and sacred music. His inspired skills and
accomplishments have exalted him to the rarified top ranks of
composers of true genius.

Now,
why do I mention Bach’s genius so often, and glorify his works?

Well,
if you’ve read this far, I’m gratified at your patience…

You
may have read my ‘Mozart’s Brain’ broadsheets. They show you I
use music to inspire my creative “little gray cells,” a phrase
which Hercule Poirot - the Belgian detective Agatha Christie created
- always used to refer to (i.e., his brain). I’ve got special
musical pieces I’ve drawn inspiration from for both full novels,
and others I’ve delighted in for the short stories.

There’s
so much
of Bach’s gorgeous music to be sifted through. I have no
difficulty finding and working into my creative thoughts a new piece
of his. One I may never have heard before. And he serves to inspire
me…

Now,
these short “flights of fancy” aren’t going to be an extended
admiring biographical sketch of Bach. They’ll be compact jewel
cases of different themes, loosely related to creative writing.
Their common thread will be subjects which are deep within us. They
will dwell upon emotions which we may not even know we use when we
set about writing various scenes in our stories, or acts in our
screenplays. We all need them, and we all use them. But sometimes,
we want them to just help us get in touch with our own feelings, to
get a sense of “what it’s like” to be in the shoes of one or
more of our characters…

Maybe
I’ll be good enough to help you make these connections. Maybe not.
But these short works will seek to offer some beautifully crafted
writing, which, when we all have produced something and look back
upon it, we can say, “I’m
glad I experienced that!...”

♠♠♠

About
the author…

Wim
Baren is the author’s pen name. He lives a stone’s throw from
Colonial Williamsburg, a place rich in history. He imagines himself
a novelist. He’s written two full-length tales set in long-ago
times. He’s also written a couple of short stories, and a bunch of
short broadsheets about his creative writing experiences and
insights. All of these are on Smashwords, and almost all of them are
free.

As
of the date of this writing, he’s playing at setting up his own
website (http://WriteHand.org
– not complete yet),
and is feverishly inventing two new tales, also set in ancient times.
One is a sequel to “The Crimson Emperor” – a fabulously
romantic tale about Byzantium known by practically nobody – and
another is an alternative history surrounding the Empress Theodora of
Byzantium, a larger-than-life novel about the most powerful woman in
the 6th
century world at the time. That period of the Eastern Roman Empire
did not lack excitement, to say the least…

So,
with a spouse he dotes upon, two aging (nearly 17 years young)
Shi-Tzus who still think they are only two years old, and a pleasant
prospect over which his front entrance looks to stimulate his
thoughts, he’s got a quiet and most enjoyable lifestyle. Would
that everybody could enjoy the same, or more…